jhp

JavaScript Hypertext Preprocessor

You had nightmares about it, the frenchman did it!

WTF?

JHP brings a PHP-like approach to Node.JS programming. To make it brief it's a "best of both worlds", "worse of both worlds" kind of deal.

Install and run

npm install jhp -g

Then, use the command-line application jhp:

  Usage: jhp [options]

  Options:

    -h, --help           output usage information
    -V, --version        output the version number
    -d, --dir  [path]    Specify root directory (default './')
    -p, --port [number]  Specify port number (default 80)

Use

In the root directory, create index.jhp:

<?
    response.setHeader( "Content-Type", "text/plain" );
    response.write( request.url );
    response.end();

So, yes, it's pretty much the same as PHP:

• files with the .jhp extension will be executed by the server,
• while other files will be passed verbatim to the client (like a static file server would).

response and request are the same objects you'd have in a http.createServer handler. Except that request has several new fields:

• body, a promise that gets resolved with the request body (if and when the request has a body)

    <?
    	request.body.done(function( body ) {
    		response.end( body );
    	});

• query, a promise that gets resolved with the merge of both GET and POST parameters

    <?
    	response.setHeader( "Content-Type", "text/plain" );
    	request.query.done(function( query ) {
    		for ( var key in query ) {
    ?>
    <?= key ?>: <?= query[ key ] ?>
    <?
    		}
              response.end();
    	});

• parsedURL, the request url as parsed by require("url").parse( url, true )

(promises provided by JQDeferred)

Remember: this is still Node.JS we're talking about, so always call reponse.end() when you wanna flush the response!

What now?

JHP is meant as a rapid prototyping and testing environment, nothing more, nothing less. It won't toast your bread.

It is licensed under both the GPLv2 and the MIT licenses.

JHP is pretty fresh out of the oven, code is crude and features are sparse...

So it needs you:

• what kind of pluggable architecture should it have?
• what built-in features is it lacking?

What we intend to work on right now is the static file serving part.